Wine shops in India, where drinkers take recourse to whisky, rum, brandy, vodka, beer and, well, wine, had a new entrant about six months ago. A whisky by the name Rockford Reserve was squeezed onto shelves already groaning with hundreds of Indian and imported drinks.

If you have had Rockford, it could be because the person at the counter nudged you to it. Retail outlet owners were the first customers and hence, the espousal. Otherwise, you are the experimental type ("Hey, what do we have here..."). Both factors are critical to its success.

In the so-called Indian Made Foreign Liquor market, whiskies are dominated by brands that cost Rs 250-300. There are the familiar such as Bagpiper and Officer's Choice and the unfamiliar — have you heard of Shivas and Tusker?

Through the lens of a non-drinker, these are all the same. But the makers of Rockford Reserve, Modi Illva India — a joint venture between Umesh Modi Group and liqueur maker Illva Saronno of Italy — took pains to distinguish the brand from this lot.

Mass-market whiskies are cheap simply because they don't cost much to produce. They lack tradition or the fine art of whisky-making because they are essentially made of molasses. The price may be a good reason for consumption, and they evoke a grimace or a wince even in a hardened drinker.

Rockford is different in that it is a blended whisky. The finished product, thanks to the efforts of a master blender from Scotland and an Indian counterpart, is a confluence of Indian malts, grain spirits, Scotch whisky, and even peaty whisky from abroad.

That gives it a smooth flavour and the licence to position it in what is known as the premium segment where brands cost Rs 600-900 (those priced above fall in the super premium or Scotch whisky segment), according to its makers.

Premium Product

It was a calculated move. Brands such as Bagpiper constitute the mass market. As the name suggests, it is crowded. There are too many competitors to count. In comparison, the premium segment looks deserted. Rockford has only three competitors in Blenders Pride, Signature and Antiquity Blue.

That's why the premium segment comprises only 4% (5-6 million cases a year) of the total Indian whisky market (150 million cases). In terms of value, the segment is a tad over Rs 2,000 crore, but what matters is the scorching growth at 25% a year.

There was definitely space for another player in this segment, according to Abhishek Modi, CEO of Modi Illva India: "Why one? There is actually space for more than one player in this segment."

At Rs 750 (liquor prices vary across states due to different tax structures), Rockford is priced between existing brands and entry-level Scotch whisky. "Right now, we are the most premium Indian whisky in the market," says Modi.

This space was long vacant, he says, because accumulation of tariffs and duties over the years had widened the gap between imported and Indian whiskies. "Before our entry, there was more or else Blenders Pride, which was selling at around Rs 600, and entry-level Scotch whiskies that cost around Rs 900. There was nothing in between."

Testing the Waters

Modi-Illva worked on the blend for 18 months before test-marketing the product through a research agency. The agency approached consumers of competitors and a few Scotch whisky brands like Teacher's and 100 Pipers to understand their preferences.

The feedback on the attributes of each product was diverse. Some liked smoothness, others the aftertaste in the mouth. Understandably, a brand is held in high esteem if it doesn't inflict the misery of a hangover.

Customers were then asked to taste Rockford. Some found the product a tad bitter. Others disapproved the colour. A few were averse to the smell. Modi Illva India returned to the drawing board to "play around" with the blend. It made many more tweaks before it was finally introduced in the market, according to Modi: "We tweaked the product again and again and again."

The company followed the same pattern with packaging, roping in a design agency based in London. It approached consumers in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore with 18 designs. Customers equated coloured bottles with the premium segment.

"That's not something we had in mind," says Modi. The result was an olive-coloured bottle marked "1959", a reference to the year that the company's distillery in Modinagar in Uttar Pradesh was established. "A whisky is ultimately all about the blend," says Modi. "Packaging helps, but it eventually is about the blend."

These efforts set back the company by $1 million, according to Modi. "It was a lot of work — it would have been so much easier to come up with a mass product, which is simple in blend."